Tales from the Food Bank

I’m back in work again. Last week, I started at a food bank where my earnings are the square root of fuck all. I will blog from time-to-time about it, not to show what a wonderful person I am, because I’m not a wonderful person at all, but to tell you, my loyal reader, what it’s like. Here’s my first report.

I’ve been to food banks before. Working for the horrible British Red Cross – your usual reminder: don’t give them any money – I accompanied people who had nothing to get some food. It was a huge shock to the system because I’d perhaps believed some of the right-wing blurb, that food bank users were feckless and on the make. They were nothing like that.

These food banks were in North East Somerset where the MP is the ridiculous Jacob Rees-Mogg who in 2017 said the existence of food banks was “rather uplifting” and “shows what a compassionate country we are“. Rather uplifting was not how I felt when driving people who had nothing to get some food. Utterly depressing and dispiriting was more like it. The people I was with were desperately grateful for the help they got, even though that day’s help was mere sticking plaster.

The people I met last week were grateful, too. They included senior citizens who were just about managing before the increase in fuel bills but were now going without food. People released from prison who were now living in shared houses with fellow ex prisoners. Some young mothers who had nothing with which to feed their children. People who had suffered a lifetime of serious abuse and were seriously damaged. There were single blokes, both young and old. I wouldn’t say it was somehow an accurate representation of the society in which I live, but there was not one type of person. And they spanned the class divide.

Few questions were asked. People are referred by a wide variety of people, from social services, Age UK, charities and they all have appointments. No one is asked for their ID because it is felt unnecessary. I get that. You go through so many hoops seeking help with government bodies so why make things more complicated than they need to be? I doubt that anyone is going to defraud a food bank out of some pasta, cereal boxes and long life milk, but if someone does, then so be it.

You run through a list with people, asking first if they have any allergies and intolerances and then asking what people like from that list. Once that is done, you take the list to the store room and other volunteers put things into bags.

Everything that comes in is weighed and when it goes out it is weighed again. This is to ensure that people who so generously donate to the food bank have a sense of accountability with regard to what they give. I thought this a little odd, but then I remembered the hateful right-wing red tops who just love to put the boot into food banks, regarding them as the work of the (entirely made-up) wokerati. It takes seconds so I can see the logic and sense of it.

It seemed busy enough to me, but my fellow volunteers said it had been a relatively quiet day. God alone knows what it’s like when it is busy.

I thought loads of things. When I was in the store room, I saw products I may have purchased via our weekly donation by our supermarket home delivery. Obviously, it probably wasn’t but it was a means of realising that each of us has a role to play.

I’m happy to do this for nothing. And I’m grateful that someone welcomes my services. There’s something in it for me, too. I’m putting a bit back to society, doing something because I think it’s right and not because I think I can make a fast buck.

I know too that this could have been me. My mum and me were very poor when she was bringing me up and we ate from day-to-day and on some days she never ate so that I could. I never went hungry because my mum was always able to source something, even some out of date pig’s liver, a pork chop or even, if we were really lucky, minced beef. We never had a fridge until I was well into my teens and our old electric oven included a number of things, like two rings and the grill which didn’t work. I suppose I have never forgotten where I came from and what it was like. My only regret is that it has taken until now to do something to help others, for free.

If you thought that somehow food banks weren’t really necessary and that their importance was overplayed by the media, I simply ask you to think again. I’ve known for years how important they are and rather than simply being angry at a government, elected by people who just don’t seem to care.

Yes, it could have been me and it could have been you. It’s simply criminal that we need food banks but it would be tantamount to murder to not have them. Indeed, pretty well the only banks on the high street these days are food banks.